May 2015
No money, no network, no plan B
I founded division5 at 23, with no connections, no money, no references and no experience. My plan lasted until the money ran out, which did not take long. The only way to keep the company alive was to sell software development services, so that is what we sold.
The next five years
Trying to escape
Once we were solvent I kept trying to pivot into a product. Every attempt pulled attention away from the business that was paying salaries, and none of the products got far enough to matter. I call it cheating on your business, because looking back, that is what it was.
Six years in
The bottleneck had my name on it
Clients were attached to me rather than to the company. Every proposal and every difficult call queued behind me, and I read that as being essential. It was the opposite. Founder dependency is not a property of services. It is a stage, and you build your way out of it with systems.
2022
Writing it all down
We captured how the work actually gets done and built it into how new people learn, so someone leaving became a setback instead of a hole. I started divisionAI to put software underneath that operation, with AI inside it rather than bolted on the side.
Today
What it became
division5 is a marketplace that connects vetted AI-native engineers across the Balkans with companies in Europe and beyond. Our recruitment used to take five people and now runs with two, because agents do the assembly work and a person still makes every call that leaves the building.
Why I build in Albania
Albania exports its best people. Everything I build is a bet that it does not have to.
A young engineer here should not have to choose between the career they want and the country they are from. Build companies here that meet a world standard, and they no longer have to. That means real projects, senior people to learn from, and the structure to grow into senior work without boarding a plane.
What I hold to
Four things I learned the slow way
Kindness
Kindness is leverage, not softness. A satisfied client pays the invoice. A client who trusts you brings you the next three.
Persistence
Stay with one thing long enough and it compounds. Change direction and you start from zero, carrying nothing forward.
Discipline
Write it down. Every time the company was stuck, the thing blocking it existed only in my head.
Patience
Cash flow is the measure, not a funding announcement. A decade of compounding beats a decade of pivoting.
If this sounds like your company, start with the playbook.
It is the same diagnostics I run with leadership teams, written so you can do them on your own.